16 May 2003 - The Genocide of Iraq

With all that has happened and is still happening in Iraq, the real crime is being left largely unmentioned. The real crime was not the war of invasion itself that started in March. The real crime was that this war never really stopped and the toll from this war was huge. Leading British and US politicians are now admitting that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction may never be found, that perhaps they have indeed been destroyed. What does this imply about the whole period of sanctions which killed hundreds of thousands, of Iraqi's? It implies that it was deliberately made impossible for Iraq to adequately demonstrate that they no longer existed. They were innocent but were treated as guilty with no way to prove otherwise. This was the conclusion drawn several years ago by the Iraqi regime, so it should not be a surprise to us today. This has been a war over 12 years which has caused the death of well over a million Iraqis, mostly innocent civilians, mostly children. It is now clear beyond reasonable doubt that this was a genocide. This is a crime not just of the USA, but of the entire UN. Perhaps that is why we continue to hear about how failure to find WMDs means the US was wrong to invade, but we hear almost nothing about how failure to find WMDs means that the UN was wrong to impose the years of devastating sanctions. 

No country taking part in the sanctions looks good now, so don't be surprised if we never see any of them making statements of regret. Indeed, it now seems to be the aim of Russia and France to keep the sanctions in place! Sanctions were never about enforcing international law, they were never about removing Sadam from power. Sanctions were a genocidal attack on the people of Iraq. They should never have been put in place and French and Russian games for control of oil should not be an excuse for trying to keep them now.